Beneath Ceaseless Skies #51 Read online

  I leaped to the next building, jumping a gap wider than I was tall. An outside staircase sagged from the far corner. I scampered down. I relived the moment when I’d slipped and my arm had plunged through the wall. I could see Tynach’s horsey mouth, teeth like doors. If only I’d kept my balance. If only I hadn’t been so tired.

  Early morning workers trickled into the streets. A garbage cart pulled by two swayback horses in blinders rattled by. The reek of rotting food lingered in the air. I stumbled after the cart, unclear what direction to travel but needing to move. Maybe when the university opened, I could sell a textbook and get a cup of coffee.

  Shouting filled the streets ahead of me. A squad of guards quickstepped past, muskets at the ready. I turned the corner to Blasphemer’s Arch and stopped dead in my tracks.

  Jet-black hooks covered the carved stone blocks. Bodies hung from every hook. Some twitched and sobbed and scrabbled at the stone. Others dripped dark blood that looked black in the light. Most were already dead. The wind shifted and brought the raw-meat smell of a butchery to my nose.

  I turned and retched in a doorway. My empty stomach twisted and clenched. Thin bile spilled onto the steps at my feet. More guards pushed down the street, herding civilians away from the Arch.

  A thick-shouldered soldier grabbed my arm. “Stand back. Official business.”

  I let myself be dragged away. “What happened?” I asked, but I felt sure I knew the answer.

  The guard grunted. “A dark manifestation. Now get outta here.” He shoved me up the street and took position next to his squad mates, blocking access to the Arch.

  A bone-chilling scream erupted from around the corner. The line of guards flinched but held their positions. My stomach twisted again, but I resisted throwing up. The crowd swirled around me.

  A man stumbled into my back and knocked me to the wet ground. My injured knee hit a cobblestone. I gasped for breath. Boots clomped past, missing my head by less than a handspan. I curled tighter. For a long moment, I wanted nothing more than to be trampled to death.

  The crowd kicked and trod on me without mercy, but I found the determination to crawl to the side, discovered an eddy in the flow, and took a deep breath. I pushed myself to my feet. The brick walls felt ragged as unshaped rock under my palm. Shouts and the sounds of running feet battered my ears.

  A shriek of pain, louder than the rest, startled me. An older white woman had been pushed to the ground. Her hat flew from her head and was lost. I imagined her bones cracking under the boots of the panicked crowd. Without thinking, I thrust my body into the press of people. I used my elbow and fist. I head-butted. I forged a path.

  “Ma’am.” I grabbed the woman’s shoulder and dragged her to safety.

  After a few minutes, the street cleared. The line of guards had stopped at the corner. They seemed agitated, looking right and left. They fingered their muskets like good-luck charms. The woman touched my cheek. Her lined face broke into a relieved smile. “Thank you, young man.” She patted her hair and slipped into the street.

  I tried to gather my fleeting wits. I had been such a fool. A blind, prideful, arrogant fool. People were dying because of me. Because I wanted Katherine’s body.

  I shuffled forward, head bowed. A rare glint of sunlight made the street sparkle like bright white diamonds had been scattered at my feet. I shouldered the pack. The library would be open. I could rework the magic. Restore the rightful order.

  * * *

  The library, however, was closed to the general public due to the emergency. I met the blank stares of a pair of guards and drew myself up. “I demand entry!”

  The older guard, a man in his mid forties, narrowed his eyes at me. “Run along sonny. You’re not even a student.”

  “I have Important Business.” I cursed under my breath. “My robes were dirty.”

  “Go on,” the other guard spoke. “You heard the man.” He slapped a nightstick into his palm with a heavy, meaty sound.

  I backed down. The library was a huge building. Maybe another entrance wouldn’t be guarded. I jogged around the corner, feeling the gaze of the guards on my back as if a target had been painted there.

  Serena stood with another guard at the side entrance. Her eyes widened when she saw me, but she didn’t say anything.

  I approached and gave a slight bow. “Ma’am.” I addressed Serena. “I have an important message for Scholar Fabian.”

  Serena glared at me. “Do you—”

  I cut her off. “I must see him in person.”

  The other guard grunted from his perch on the side railing. “You escort him. I’ll hold down the fort here.” He spit a stream of brown tobacco juice into the bushes.

  Serena grabbed my upper arm. “Understood.” She yanked me into the echoing gloom of the library. “This better be good,” she hissed.

  “It’s all my fault.” I poured out the whole story to Serena, gabbling in sentence fragments and interrupting myself with remembered details.

  Serena’s eyes narrowed with each new revelation. She shook me the way a dog would shake a rat. “I should—I—arrrghh.”

  “I can fix it.” I felt a swell of confidence. “I still have the equations.” I scrabbled in my pack and removed a sodden mass of half-burned papers.

  “I’m going to turn you in.”

  “Give me a chance.” I fell to my knees. “You’ll hang right next to me when they learn the whole story.”

  “Twin’s balls!” Serena jerked me to my feet. “You bastard. I ought to—” She whipped her billy club sideways into my head.

  “Ouch!” My left arm slipped. I slapped the tentacle to my temple.

  Serena recoiled. “Abomination.”

  My head rang with pain. I probed the tender lump with the sensitive cilia at the tip of my tentacle. “I made a mistake. But I can fix it.”

  “Some mistake.” Serena’s gaze bored into my eyes. “How many people have died? How many families are mourning a new transgressor?”

  Guilt surged inside me. “I know.”

  “Real justice would have you on the hook.” She spat at my feet. “And you have the nerve to threaten me.”

  She was right. I’d fucked up. My own stupid pride.

  “You’re absolutely correct.” I hung my head. “I can fix it faster than anyone else. If you turn me in now, it’d take days for someone to replicate my work. Days of more people killed. More transgressors.”

  Serena grabbed my shoulders and shook me again. “I should turn you in. Right now. Let a Scholar decide what to do.”

  I caught my breath. “There’s not much time.” I stood tall. Hope beat a staccato rhythm in my chest.

  Serena narrow her eyes. “All right. But one more spanner in the works, Orlen, and I swear I’ll drag you to a tribunal so fast your head will spin.”

  I nodded and led Serena through the musty shelves of the great library. Whenever we heard voices, we waited, hiding and spying our way clear. We ducked through the last passageway. I eased open the door to my room.

  The space seemed smaller than I remembered. The books on their shelves looked old and decrepit. Mold stained one wall. The smell of smoke tickled the back of my throat.

  I arranged my work on the desk and asked Serena to gather as many blank pages from the shelved books as she could find. She tore the paper from the spines with a determined abandon, stacking sheet after sheet next to me.

  I scribbled madly, checking my equations in books spread open on every surface. I’d take the inverse of the summoning field and close the singularities with Penrose tessellations. My tentacle brushed Serena. She snarled. I tucked the offending appendage under my shirt.

  After what seemed like an age, I planted my feet and taped the last sheet of paper to the wall. I was determined to keep my balance this time. Bright white light speared through the pages, throwing the room into stark relief. Serena caught my good hand and squeezed.

  The light pulsed and flashed. Snow fell from the ceiling, great white flakes
that landed on my skin with sharp prickles. A glorious, winged figure erupted from the center of the room.

  The closest bookshelf toppled sideways with a crash, nearly hitting Serena. Books scattered pell-mell across the floor.

  A woman made of light, dressed in folds and swaths of brilliance, smiled at us. “Thank you. My brother has been busy.” She touched my shoulder. “You may breathe.”

  Air whooshed out of me. I nodded and started to talk, but the woman lifted her arms and stretched towards the ceiling. She swelled and grew. Great waves of light pulsed out of her body. My eyes stung. I let go of Serena to shield my face.

  The woman crouched, shoulders pressed into the plaster above her. A bookshelf scraped sideways against the floor. She stood, and in one smooth motion, slipped through the mundane material of the ceiling. I blinked in the relative darkness.

  Serena laughed. Her eyes sparkled with transparent joy. “Did you see—”

  I nodded. “She was gorgeous.”

  “Let’s go to the roof. I want to watch her.” Serena grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the door. Her earlier anger with me seemed forgotten.

  We raced through the stacks towards a stairway Serena knew. Sliding around a corner, we nearly smacked head-on into a guard. He stood, transfixed in our path, staring at a row of sunflowers that had sprouted from the floor.

  “She’s so beautiful.” The guard seemed stunned, like he’d been clubbed in the back of the head.

  “Come on, Orlen.” Serena plastered a smile on her face. We sidled past the guard. Other checkpoints were deserted, and I could hear off-key singing down the Scholars’ hallway.

  The cramped stairway twisted up and up, winding around a central tower like an ivy vine. Tiny windows of wavy glass allowed thin light to illuminate our progress. I huffed and panted, my breath burning in my chest. Serena drew ahead, and soon I could no longer see her, just hear her boots on the treads.

  The light surged. I blinked spots from my eyes. A collective wave of sound from outside rattled through the building. At the top of the stairs, I threw the door open.

  Serena stood on the flat roof of a tower no larger than my studio apartment. Wind pulled at her hair. “Orlen.” Her voice carried the crack of authority. “She’s at the docks.”

  I joined Serena at the railing, careful not to look straight down. A line of green maple trees, bursting with out-of-season leaves, ran from the library to the docks. Their branches thrust skyward even as I watched. Brilliant yellow and orange flowers dotted the roofs along the path.

  People wandered half-clothed in the streets, talking with dogs or scattering petals on their neighbors. One couple made love in an alleyway. An abandoned oxcart full of radishes had jack-knifed in a side street and the poor animals lowed and stamped in their yokes.

  “Orlen.” A dark voice sounded from the stairs.

  I spun around. “Tynach.”

  Tynach’s black visage split open in a terrible smile. He kept his hands behind his back and stepped onto the tower roof. “I have something for you.”

  Serena stepped forward. “What are you up to?” Her voice cracked, but I admired her spirit.

  Tynach cocked his head. “Serena Blackomb.” He seemed to consult an internal store of knowledge. “Four counts of shoplifting. You liked to play with matches, too. No one ever solved the mystery of the burned barn, did they?” The planes and angles of Tynach’s face seemed to swallow the light.

  Serena swallowed. “No one got hurt.”

  Tynach’s smile expanded. “True, true. There’ll be time to weigh the balance later. I have a present for Orlen now.” He drew his arms forward. “I found her. Master.” Clutched in Tynach’s unbreakable grip, Katherine glared at me.

  “Katherine?” My heart clogged my throat.

  A fist-sized clump of hair at the apex of Katherine’s skull was missing. Filth streaked her gown. A purple bruise marred her cheek. She drew herself upright and pushed her swollen belly towards me. “You.” Her voice dripped contempt.

  I felt like the stones beneath my feet had turned to thin air. “Katherine?” I tottered forward and then retreated. “You’re preg—going to have a—”

  “An adulteress,” Tynach rumbled. “I have special hooks for those.”

  My resolve hardened. “No.” In an instant, I realized that I didn’t want Katherine any more. She’d used me, clearly never seeing me as more than a convenient means to an end. A young black buck. Even so, she didn’t deserve a hook. No one did.

  “What under the Twin’s gaze is going on here?” Fabian strode onto the roof, drawing his eyebrows together and glaring at me over the beak of his nose.

  The sky pulsed and flashed. Snow fell from the clouds. A horde of black beetles erupted from every crevice and seethed across the floor.

  The woman made of light settled to the stone in front of Tynach. Glowing wings folded themselves into her back. “Thank you, Orlen. It is time.”

  I started to say something, but the woman lifted her arm and reached towards Tynach. He smiled, too. A grim smile, but understanding. Their hands touched.

  The two forms melded and became one, flickering through shapes and colors faster than I could comprehend. The new being expanded and grew larger and yet more insubstantial at the same time. In a moment, it had disappeared.

  I sagged to the roof, sitting on the wet surface, not caring how the water soaked my clothes. “We did it.”

  Fabian’s pinched expression took on a glimmer of respect. “That was a class three manifestation that you canceled out, boy.”

  Serena punched my shoulder. “What were you thinking?” She sounded fierce, but her relieved smile took the sting out of her words.

  Katherine sputtered in the corner and then burst into tears. Fabian bowed his head towards her. “Mrs. Helstrom. Allow me to escort you home?” He extended a gaunt elbow but turned to speak to me. “We’ll talk later. There may be promise for you, after all.”

  After they left, I stood. I thought about the wrecked shelves below, the torn books, the scattered papers. I started down the stairs. On the main floor, a librarian sobbed and clutched at a trampled book. Serena followed me through the stacks.

  Back in the room, I stared at the destruction I had caused. “I should clean this mess.” I tipped the shelves upright one-handed and started stacking books. The heavy tomes slipped solidly into place. The snow had evaporated without leaving a trace, and the air smelled as clean as a summer morning.

  Copyright © 2010 Garth Upshaw

  Comment on this Story in the BCS Forums

  Garth Upshaw lives in Portland, Oregon with his super-genius wife and three precocious children. When he’s not breeding tarantulas, he rides his bike through the sleeting downpours. His story “Gizzard Stones” appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #35, and his other stories have appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, and other magazines.

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  THE SWALLOW AND THE SEA

  by E. Catherine Tobler

  ‘Twas Abigail Goodwin who saw beyond the pirate of me, to the man, and loved me for that and disregarded the ill I’d done; so ‘twas me who saw beyond the folly of her and promised to carry her dead body to the swirling depths of Scylla.

  Abigail meant to kill herself that night, and if the leap from the rain-slick stone tower of her home didn’t do it well enough, surely the cold depth of the sea would. I watched her pace at the top of that tower, back and forth before one weak torch, and took another pull on the wine bottle. My vision blurred under the blowing rain; the wine took it a step further.

  I dropped the bottle to the bottom of the dinghy and wished for Abigail to be finished, for this terrible night to end. Let her muster the strength and do it soon—though now her heart still beat. If I meant to betray the promise I’d made her, the time was now.

  The only movement I made was back to the wine bottle. The wine was cheap, but it warmed me. Around the dinghy, the sea bounced and flecked me with
cold spit; somewhere in that cold splatter, I found a measure of calm. I looked back up to see the flutter of Abigail’s gown against the storm. She looked like a pale wing as she plunged with a speed that made my heart skip.

  She vanished without a sound, under the dark choppy waters. I dropped the wine bottle and grasped the oars, pulling as hard as I could with wet hands. When I reached the point where I’d lost sight of her, I jumped overboard into the black sea. I’d promised.

  Like a great creature, Abigail floated in the murky water, pale skin almost iridescent in the dark. Her gown enveloped her, massive blooms of linen, silk, whatever it was ladies wore these days. I struggled to get a hold of any part of it. I came up with a foot, with a shoe that slipped off in my fingers. I gave it up to the seafloor and lunged for her foot again.

  I swam down Abigail’s inverted body, and when at last I held her around her nipped waist—ah, she’d worn her corset to the last!—swam upward. My lungs burned and bubbles of escaping breath blinded me until at last we broke through the surface. The hardening rain pelted us.

  “Ah, Abigail, curses on you.” I cradled her against me and prayed that she would lift her head, that her brown eyes would look once more into mine, but she floated limp in my grasp, her dark blonde hair trailing like weeds around in the water. “More the fool I, for saying yes.”

  I swam us back to the longboat, hauling Abigail’s sodden body aboard after my own. I lay panting and closed my eyes to the rain, allowing it and the motion of the dinghy to carry me to another place, a green meadow where Abigail had kissed me for the first time. Some part of her had tasted of ocean water even then.

  “I trust only you,” she had said, and held my hands as she told me the truth of her life. She was not human and could no longer live as such.

  “You feel human enough.” I said it then and now both as I eased her cold body off mine; Abigail curled into the bottom of the boat, with the wine bottle, the oars, and the slop of the storm. She had hit her head on something, for blood darkened her temple. Her hands were folded against her chest, like long, pale gloves that had lost their buttons. I traced the line of her hand around her wrist, loosened a strand of black seaweed, and touched her palm where I would have sweared to heaven that I felt a pulse.